Page images
PDF
EPUB

true, is the most astonishing thing that you have ever heard of, and withal the most important thing to you, personally, that you can imagine-for he is doing his best to convince you that the Jesus of Nazareth, of Whom he claimed to be the servant and Apostle, was the Man Who was to come, Whom all your great forefathers expected, and to Whom all your prophets bare witness. There he is with the Psalms before him, proving to you (or endeavouring to do so) that David is to have a Son or descendant, who is to be his Lord. There he is, attempting to show your priests that God has sworn to raise up another priesthood greater than that of your priests, even a priesthood of which the famous Melchizedec was the typethat mysterious Melchizedec before whom your great forefather Abraham bowed his head for his blessing. There he is, in the midst of your rabbis and teachers, appealing to the prophecies of degradation and suffering that are intimately bound up with the prophecies of glory, and honour, and power; showing you that the Messiah whom your prophets speak of must die: not in prison, as John the Baptist; not by stoning, as St. Stephen; not by poison, as the great heathen had died; but by a death of exposure in agony, and thirst, and nakedness, with hands and feet pierced, and before a raging mob. There he is, taking your own accounts and acknowledgments of the vile death to which

you had put this Jesus, and turning them against yourselves, yourselves, showing you that it behoved Christ thus to suffer. There he is, bringing before you proof after proof of the miracles of this same Jesus, and above all, heaping proof upon proof of His Resurrection, and of the resurrection power that He showed when, after ascending, He endued His before feeble and cowardly followers with such power over nature, such knowledge of the heart, such aptitude of speech, such ability to speak with tongues that they could never have studied, that the powers of the world were shaking before them. And lastly, you would hear this same Paul telling you that once he had opposed and blasphemed against this Jesus, but that he had seen Him-had seen Him at midday, whilst he was riding in the midst of a troop of men, not far from a great and populous city, and that one sight of His glory and majesty had convinced him, changed him, severed him from all that he once held dear, and made him live for what he had once hated.

Well, you and those assembled with you are amazed at it all. There is a great stir in the assembly. Some mock; some ask questions in a hostile spirit. Some ask the same questions for truth's sake, if so be they may attain to it. Some prudently, as they think, suspend their judgment. Some have found the hope of their fathers, the key of their Scriptures, the meaning

of their sacrificial rites, the assurance of their eternal life, the revelation of their God as He had never revealed Himself before-as their Father. "Some," in the words of the sacred writer, "some believe the things which were spoken, and some believe not." The assembly is broken up; they go out and disperse; but not as they came in do they go away. No; oh no. Some have accepted the message of God Himself; some have rejected it. Some begin to have life eternal within them, for they begin to know Him Who is the Life; some hold themselves unworthy of eternal life. Whether another opportunity will be vouchsafed to them God only knows. Those who believe gain God; and with Him, all things. Some→ those who believe not-lose the God they thought they had.

Must we say this? What does St. John, the loving St. John, say?"He that hath not the Son hath not the Father."

Yes, it is very terrible to think, but it is most true, that when once Christ is fully set before a soul, then there is henceforth no God to that soul except the God whom Christ reveals as His and our Father. When Christ is once set before a soul as the Son of God, then God is henceforth to that soul the Father of Jesus Christ, or He is nothing. There is nothing in the unseen world answering to the God of the Deist, or of the Mahometan, or of the uncon

verted Jew; because the God of the unseen world is the Father of One only Son, through Whom alone He reveals Himself to those to whom His Son is made known. Well, then, what awful words these are, "Some believed, and some believed not." It is as if he said, Some were saved, and some rejected salvation. Some gained Christ, and with Him regeneration, holiness, eternal life, God; and some rejected these things, and so lost them—it may be, for ever.

And now, brethren, on which side should you and I have been? It is surely a wholesome question this. Here we are believing because our fathers before us believed. It is well that it should be so. Our fathers' creed is a good creed. It contains in it all that St. Paul and St. Peter preached, so far as their teaching has reached us; but we must make it our own. Our fathers' faith cannot be imputed We must each one of us believe for

to us. ourselves.

Eternal life is not hereditary. We cannot be saved because our fathers have prepared for us formularies of faith, in which we express an assent which springs from no real belief of the heart, and ends in no love of either God or of our neighbour.

Our fathers have brought us to Baptism, and our sponsors may have answered for us, and we may have been at the proper age duly

C

confirmed, and then and there professed ourselves bound to believe all things promised in our name; and times without number we may have joined in the response of the congregation as they took up the words of the minister, "I believe in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Ghost;" and yet all may be a form-a lifeless form, an unreality-a recitation without heart and thought, without application to ourselves, with no idea that we are confessing before God and the Church our belief in things that could raise us up to heaven, where Christ is, and fill our souls with the love of God, and the hope of eternal life.

Whose fault then is it that men do not realize the truth of Jesus as theirs? Is it because of the preacher? Many say that it is, and I do hope that it is. Provided that we are sincere in our belief and Christian in our life, I should, for my part, wish to lay the blame on ourselves, rather than on you; but with the fact before us that an Apostle, full of the Holy Ghost, the special messenger, representative, and ambassador of Christ, was only partially successful, would it be safe to do so? However we might wish to bear the blame-the heavy blame of a very partially accepted Gospel, would it be safe for you to take us at our word, seeing that you have in your hands the New Testament, which shows you in every page that the Gospel was committed to men of

« PreviousContinue »